And since I’ve rediscovered by blog today(!), I might as well post again to complete the trifecta for the evening.

Here’s a couple of recent photos of the kids and the vid we grabbed of some of Amy’s earliest steps…

Riding hippo at the zoo – shortly after her new hair style thanks to Mum and Aunty Jen,

Next up, the video of Amy starting her walking. Soon after this she reverted back to “knee-walking” with only the occasional steps. Now however, she chooses to walk whenever she can and delights in pushing her little prams around the house – very cute!

Early steps,

And along with her early steps, her first words are taking off – many related to food (that’s my girl!) including “more”, “milk” and “custard”. Her first word was of course “Dad”, although I believe Lou will say it was “Mum”… and rather than call the cats by name she delights in squealing at them! 🙂

Finally, here’s a recent pic of Matt – also at the zoo where he loves to drive the jeep!

Matt has taken great joy in Amy’s walking and delights in pointing out every time she walks across the room. He’s also super at entertaining his little sister, and I think between the rough and tumble he’s actually getting protective of her! As for entertaining us, Matt (like all toddlers no doubt) comes out with some funny things at times, but it’s the way kids approach language that fascinates me and makes you realise how silly some expressions are. One quirky statement of late is “I did that last day” – meaning yesterday – which actually makes perfect sense! 🙂

Ah the joy of kids – just as long as Amy grows out of her obsession with the Hi-5 Dance Hits DVD… 😛

The lad turned 3 on August 2 and had a fun party with some of his friends at Tinytown in Kilbirnie – toys, playhouses, cars, a bouncy castle and party food! Lots of party food and an awesome clown cake out of our new kitchen!

And his fav toy is of course from his parents(!) – his new scooter,

Along with his third birthday came a new room at Kindercare – his creche – “Pre-school One”. So far so good – he loves the new room, new toys and big kids playground!

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The day after Matt’s birthday, Amy turned 9 months old – meaning about now(ish) she’s spent as long with us as she did growing inside Mum! How’s that for a random fact and celebration?! She’s going great guns with her growing – 95th percentile for height, and weight, well, um, apparently it’s not polite to mention a girls weight (or her thunder thighs!). Moving along, she’s also crawling now and for the most part has abandoned commando crawling in favour of all fours,

This has created all sorts of new challenges for the boy as Amy can now get to his toys! Additionally, she’s very vocal and has teeth,

Actually that popped out around a month ago and now the front two bottom ones are well up.

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So there you go. A quick update on the kids, and for the family we’ll try and get some fresh vids online soon so stay tuned…

Matthew turned 30 months old yesterday and Amy 3 months today! The kids are doing great – Matt is a little chatterbox and fun to talk to while Amy is all smiles, wriggling lots and sleeping well most nights. A couple of recent pics…

Now that the pixels have been processed, here’s our Christmas Day family photo!

The best we could do with busy boy! For a few more recent photos, click through to the albums for both Amy and Matt…

So, what’s new with us? We’ve just returned from a nice break up on the Kapiti Coast, staying with Jenny, Brendon and their little Oliver – where both the weather and Santa were kind to us all!

As for the kids, with outstanding timing for Christmas, Amy (7.5 weeks) has started smiling at us big time – sooo cute! Meanwhile, Matthew (almost 2 years 5 months) continues to do everything at full speed and (amazingly for me) can now read numbers between 1-10 when shown at random – stay tuned for a vid of that one!

Looking back, it’s hard to believe 2008 is almost done! What a year. I started a new role at MetService in the Severe Weather section. Louise retired (again) for the arrival of our second child – Amy – who joined us within 45 minutes of arriving at the hospital! Three months earlier, Matthew turned two, and he is now Mr Independant(!) but also very helpful, a little chatterbox and a delight to talk to and play with. 🙂

So, if I don’t see you in the near future – Happy New Years! (a little early, but hey) Roll on ’09 with lots more fun…

A while ago Matt figured out he could move his little plastic chairs to help him reach things – including the door handle,

Initially however, his cunning plan was flawed as the door swings inwards – right to where he planted the chair. HA! That didn’t last long. He now knows to leave a small gap, open the door a crack, climb down, move the chair, then open the door. Luckily, we have a last line of defence – all our external doors have deadlocks that can only be opened by keys (now hidden!)

And this vid was taken a couple of nights ago when Matt was having a great time singing “row row row your boat…” with his mum in the bath,

It’s been a while since I’ve thrown up some comments and photos of the little guy – who’s not quite so little these days!

Matt is almost two months off his second birthday and is getting more and more helpful – which is a good thing with a brother or sister for him on the way.

So what’s he up to? Plenty as usual, and always at full speed! Matt has taken to running everywhere and climbing over anything or anyone (including the cat) to get to what he wants – normally while saying “want it. want it!” He loves creche and the other kids there – as evidenced by him frequently reciting his little friends names when he wakes up. He’s also taken to reciting the alphabet and counting – although these are probably not fully understood and simply rope learned from us. Here’s a quick video of part of the alphabet…

On the scary front, he showed me today how to drag a chair across the room to climb up to grab something – seems nothing is safe in our place anymore. All in all, he’s a fun little boy who keeps us on our toes. And needless to say it’s going to be doubly interesting in November when he has to share Mum and Dad with another baby… or will it be October? Preliminary due date is Nov 6 – place your bets…!